The Lost Symbol

The Lost Symbol

Author: Dan Brown

Publisher: Doubleday

Pages: 478

The latest thriller by the creator of ‘Da Vinci Code’ and ‘Angels and Demons’ is another page turner in the inimitable style of the master story teller. The book is based on the esoteric rituals and practices of the very poweful secret society ‘Free Masons’ in which the most prominent personalities of the USA are members. The prodigal son of the society’s tallest leader tries to break in to the society through a map encoded in a small stone pyramid kept in secret cellars. This man was practising occultism and believes that the knowledge or ‘lost word’ which can be located by deciphering the engraving on the pyramid will turn him into a demon with mystical powers if he sacrifices himself at the altar of the House of the Temple of Freemasons. Robert Langdon, the hero of the two earlier super hit books, along with the help of Katherine Solomon, the sister of the freemason’s leader averts this crisis by unlocking the secret codes. The villain of the piece possesses a video of occult practises performed by the freemasons in which several influential senators and justices of the Supreme Court are participating. The CIA is determined to stop the video from circulating and declares its recovery as a concern for national security. All is solved at the last minute by the lead characters. A thrilling piece of work which holds the suspense in every word of it. Superbly done.

So much for the thriller part! But the contents however, is disappointing particularly after Angels and Demons in which Brown resorts to science fiction in which a positron explosive device is used. Such a device, though doesn’t exist now, is certainly feasible if technology is sufficiently advanced. Angels and Demons is based on solid science and many chapters are staged at the CERN (European Centre for Nuclear Research) giving the author an air of scientific honorability. Alas, all that is dashed in the present work! Here, Brown praises the power of human mind, how the ancients had possessed greater knowledge than the present society, a pseudo-science called Noetics which explores whether the power of mind can alter the physical world and answers in the affirmative. There are passages in which Katherine declares that it is a solid scientific reality that thoughts have mass and prayer groups or minds working in unison can affect the world in a beneficial or harmful way.

Coming so close on the heels of Angels and Demons, surely many of the laymen who read these false premises will falter towards the junk science of mind power or Noetics or what ever you call it! There are laughable references that proves the Ancients had more wisdom than us and many scientific theories are described in an encrypted form in the old texts. We are led to believe that String theory, the physical theory for unification of the four fundamental forces of nature is detailed in the Book of Zohar, a Jewish work many thousands of years old! It has now become the fashion of a few people to declare that the ancient texts describe what we know today as scientific facts. The advocates of Vedic Science comes readily to mind. Whatever you say to them, they will show the text in the Vedas where it is described in an esoteric form. The only problem is that since the text is obscure, you have to interpret it in the way the advocates do. String theory however, is still debated and not proved true by any stretch of the imagination. I wonder how Brown can explain the irregularity if it is indeed proved wrong in future accelerator projects! Interpretation is a vast portal through which any scientific theory can be embedded in any text!

Strangely, the author seems to be doing penance after the allegations of blasphemy in the earlier works. He praises all religious books, particularly the Bible and claims that it contains scientific ideas beyond which we need not look further. The human mind, he says, is the true God and its power makes us Gods. A strong link to the Advaita theory is noticeable, in fact, the book is littered with references to Hindu concepts and ideologies. After all such trash, there is one inconsistent sentence in one the final passages, “If the ancestors could see us today, surely they would think us gods”. This is with reference to the achievements of modern Science which we have around us, but it runs counter to argument thread of the book.

Altogether, the book is a disappointing one, which comes only marginally above in quality to ‘Digital Fortress’, the poorest of Brown’s five books. The author is obsessed with Robert Langdon, the hero of three of his works! In a lighter vein, one would be tempted to ask him what happened to Sophie Novou and Vittoria Vetra, the heroines of the previous two works, when we see his romantic overtures to Katherine Solomon, the heroine of this book!

Rating: 3 Star

White Mughals

White Mughals

Author: William Dalrymple

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: 508

William Dalrymple is an Indophile English author whose work titled ‘The Last Mughal’ portrays the 1857 freedom war or mutiny, depending on which side you are on, gained much acclaim in India. Chronologically, the ‘White Mughals’ is a prequel to the events which caused the rebellion in 1857. Content wise, there is no relation between the two works. The Last Mughal is essentially history, while White Mughals is more of a novel. It establishes the love and marriage of the English resident of Hyderabad, James Achilles Kirkpatrick with Khair-un-Nissa begum, a noble lady of the Hyderabadi aristocracy. They lived happily for a decade or so, at the end of which their two children were sent to England for education and Kirkpatrick dies following a serious illness. Khair then have an affair with a senior officer of the East India Company, Henry Russell who abandons her after some time to marry an English woman. Khair also dies of an illness soon after. The children who were sent to England are converted to Christianity and never visit India again. This is the essence of the story. Nothing much to impress really.

Dalrymple establishes that the dislike and condescending attitude the British developed towards India and its culture was an entirely new offshoot in the beginning of the 19^th century. Earlier they were more accommodating and eagerly took part in the religious functions and married Indian women. The Anglo-Indian society thus formed were given prominent positions in the company hierarchy till the time of Lord Cornwallis, who put an end to such practices and excluded the hybrid community from the power centres. This was the time in which the British were still dependent on Indian kings and sultans and naturally they found it convenient to establish marital relations with the aristocracy of the princely states. At the turn of the 19^th century, the English were all powerful in India. 50 years after Plassey, they stood unchallenged with the French threat convincingly put out after Mysore wars which saw Tipu Sultan defeated.

‘White Mughals’ however, portrays the moral degeneracy India has sunk into in those periods. He quotes the writing of a Portuguese sailor thus, “Others were no doubt lured from Portuguese service by the delights of a society in which slavery, concubinage and polygamy were widespread and entirely accepted, and where they could emulate the curious figure some British sailors encountered at the beginning of the seventeenth century living with as many women as he pleaseth......he will sing and dance all day long, near hand naked...... and will be drunk two days together”.

Tipu Sultan is considered to be champion of Indian freedom since he fought against the British. Our politically inclined historians, however, has lost sight of Tipu’s real intentions in fighting against the British. He had only one aim in doing so, and that was the continuation of his reign and nothing else. He openly sought help from the French who helped him in increasing his military power and providing him with a mercenary force. How can such a person be the fountainhead of India’s freedom struggle? Dalrymple quotes a letter from Napoleon Bonaparte to Tipu, which was sent from Cairo, annexed by Napoleon. It runs thus, “You have already been informed of my arrival on the borders of the Red Sea, with an innumerable and invincible army, full of the desire of releasing and relieving you from the iron yoke of England. I eagerly embrace this opportunity of testifying to you the desire I have of being informed by you, by the way of Muscat and Mocha, as to your political situation. I could even wish you could send some sort of intelligent person to Suez or Cairo, possessing your confidence, with whom I may confer. May the Almighty increase your power, and destroy your enemies!”. It is curious to hear Bonaparte talking about iron yoke of England, because if he and Tipu had their ways, India would have been under the iron yoke of France! Some freedom fighter!

The Muslim aristocracy who ruled India had their roots in Afghanistan or Persia. The book describes how these powerful nobles saw the country of their livelihood. Abdul Lateef, a Persian in the court of Hyderabad was “shocked to see men and women naked apart from an exiguous cache-sex mixing in the streets and markets, as well as out in the country, like beasts or insects. I asked my host, “What on earth is this?” “Just the locals” he replied, “They’re all like that!” It was my first step in India, but already I regretted coming and reproached myself”. And this man lived in India for the rest of his life, sapping the tax revenue from those wretched locals whom he despised so much.

All in all, the book is not as nicely readable as the Last Mughal, especially since the author’s narration of even the minutest details like the gardening arrangements of the British resident in Hyderabad. There are several such sections where the reader has no choice but to somehow read through the boring sections. Otherwise, it is a good work, even though the theme is very superficial and does not appear anywhere in the course of Indian history.

Rating: 3 star

The Science of Leonardo

Author: Fritjof Capra

Publisher: Doubleday

Pages: 274

Leonardo Da Vinci, the renaissance painter and engineer needs no introduction to any audience. Whatever unfamiliarity the general public had, had been effectively wiped out by Dan Brown’s classic, “The Da Vinci Code”. Brown’s colourful portrayal of the great man had created the wrong impressions on many minds, mine included regarding his religious affiliations. Till I read Capra’s eminently written biographical narrative portraying Leonardo as one of the pioneering scientists and a great military engineer, I was naturally inclined to side with Brown’s suggestions of a polytheist about da Vinci.

Da Vinci was born in Florence and rose to prominence due to his works in that city and others including Milan, Rome and France. Capra’s main intention in the book is to bring out those aspects which made da Vinci a pioneering scientist. So, those who reads this book for some of the background anecdotes regarding some of the world’s greatest paintings will be in for despair. Except one or two cursory references even to Mona Lisa, Capra focuses always on the making of a scientist. Leonardo was famous for the detailed drawings on human and animal anatomy, especially equestrian, his surgeries on dead animals and humans, studies on hydraulics and canals, designing costumes and royal emblems for entertainment shows and on and on.

Leonardo clearly anticipated some of the developments in science during the 16^th century, the era of Descartes and Newton. But Capra’s suggestions that had the background been sufficiently advanced during da Vinci’s time, he would have surpassed many of the great men may better be regarded as only his opinion and not based on any established fact. Also, the origins of medieval thought is given very briefly, but attractively. The following paragraph is one of them.

“In early Greek philosophy, the ultimate moving force and source of all life was identified with the soul, and its principal metaphor was that of the breath of life. Indeed, the root meaning of both the Greek ‘psyche’ and the Latin ‘anima’ is ‘breath’. Closely associated with that moving force – the breath of life that leaves the body at death – was the idea of knowing. For the early Greek philosophers, the soul was both the source of movement and life, and that which perceives and knows. Because of the fundamental analogy between micro- and macrocosm, the individual soul was thought to be part of the force that moves the entire universe, and accordingly the knowing of an individual was seen as part of a universal process of knowing. Plato called it the ‘anima mundi’ the ‘world soul’”. The resemblance to the theory of Advaita is so striking!

And finally, a note from da Vinci’s note book – “Just as a well-spent day brings a happy sleep, so a well-employed life brings a happy death”.

Rating: 3 star